What a Gathering!
by Dr Jeffrey Khoo
FEBC’s Daily Vacation Bible College (DVBC) is an annual week-long course of daily lectures on a special topic or theme taught by the faculty or a guest professor from abroad. This year, May 1-6, the College was privileged to have world renowned professor of Biblical prophecy—Dr Paul Lee Tan—to lecture on “The Interpretation of Prophecy.” Dr Tan’s many charts and illustrations made prophecy easy to understand and remember. He emphasised the need to interpret the Bible literally, comparing Scripture with Scripture, that the Bible has only one meaning, for God means what He says and says what He means. More than 150 attended the course, some even taking leave from work just to make it for the classes.
FEBC’s 31st Graduation Service held on May 7 at Calvary Pandan B-P Church was a memorable one with about 800 in attendance. A total of 32 graduated with their certificates and degrees, ready
for God’s work in various ministries and different countries. The Board and faculty turned up in full force to take the Dean Burgon Oath. Remaining true to the Reformation Bible and Faith, we reaffirmed our belief in the present infallibility of the Holy Scriptures, totally inerrant without any mistake to the jot and tittle even today (Ps 12:6-7, Matt 5:18). Since the 1970s, Dr Timothy Tow—FEBC’s founding principal—had required every board and faculty member to swear by the Dean Burgon Oath, that the Bible is 100% perfect, without any mistake to the glory of God. Dr Tan our honoured speaker, is of kindred spirit, and spoke on “The Glory of God and Ezekiel’s Wheels (Ezek 1:1-4, 15-21).” His message will be published in the next issue of The Burning Bush. The principal’s latest book—Meditations from Psalms—saw its official release at the graduation service. A sure balm for the weary soul; get your copy from the FEBC Bookroom.
FEBC’s annual retreat, May 8-10, was held at the Resort Lautan Biru, Mersing. Faculty, students and friends of the College enjoyed a time of worship, fellowship and Bible study. Dr Paul Lee Tan spoke on “Angels and Demons.” Satanic attacks against God’s Word and God’s Church have become very fierce and intense especially in these last days, but in Christ we already have the victory. Satan and his demons may be very clever and powerful, but our Lord Jesus Christ is ALL-powerful and ALL-knowing, and He has defeated them all. Our time in Mersing was a taste of heaven on earth. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” (Ps 133:1). We were glad to see our beloved pastor and principal much refreshed at the retreat. We continue to pray for God’s grace and strength to be upon His faithful servant. Heartfelt and fervent prayers were also made to our good Lord to preserve the resort for the spiritual use of His people, especially smaller and poorer churches from both sides of the Causeway, looking for a beautiful and peaceful place for their camps and retreats. Indeed the Mersing resort has great spiritual value and can do a lot of spiritual good still. May the Lord hear our prayers. MayHis will be done. What a joyful gathering of saints it was in the meetings above. We look forward to the great and grand gathering to come when the Lord returns. What a gathering that will be!
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31st FEBC Graduation Service, May 7, 06
Word from the Academic Dean
The Bible warns in 1 Timothy 4:1-2, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.”
The Bible today is under attack like never before. The modernists through The DaVinci Code tell us that the 27 books of the New Testament Canon are false and must be replaced by newly discovered Coptic manuscripts which speak of a more realistic down-to-earth Jesus stripped of all His deity and moral purity. They claim that the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, and other Gnostic Gospels are the true Gospels; and that these Gospels must replace the Canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Many evangelical Bible Colleges and Seminaries today teach that the Bible was only infallible and inerrant in the past, but no longer infallible and inerrant today. According to popular theology, the Bible today contains “insignificant mistakes,” “redundant words,” and so-called “scribal errors.”
It is significant to note that the Bible under constant attack by modernists and evangelicals is not the NIV, not the NASB, not the RSV, not even the NKJV, or any of the modern versions but the good old Authorised or the King James Version (AV/KJV). Why is the KJV under such attack? The KJV is under such attack because it is the Bible of the 16th century Protestant Reformation, and as the Reformation Bible, it stands against the tide of unbelief, apostasy, and compromise today.
A new book written by Bart Ehrman entitled Misquoting Jesus (HarperCollins, 2005) is fast becoming a bestseller. In his book, Ehrman attacked the KJV and the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures behind the KJV. According to Ehrman, “The King James Bible was based on corrupted and inferior manuscripts that in many cases do not accurately represent the meaning of the original text. The favorite Bible story of Jesus’ forgiving the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11) doesn’t belong in the Bible. Scribal errors were so common in antiquity that the author of the Book of Revelation threatened damnation to anyone who ‘adds to’ or ‘takes away’ words from the text.” In other words, in Ehrman’s mind, the Bible contains many “scribal errors,” and if you quote from the KJV or its underlying texts, you are misquoting Jesus.
Bart Ehrman began as a fundamentalist at Moody Bible Institute but finally lost his faith at Princeton Seminary where he got his PhD. How did he lose his faith? Let me read Ehrman’s tragic testimony on page 11 of his book. He wrote, “If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don’t have the very words of scripture? In some places, as we will see, we simply cannot be sure that we have reconstructed the original text accurately. It’s a bit hard to know what the words of the Bible mean if we don’t even know what the words are!
“This became a problem for my view of inspiration, for I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them (and possibly even given them the words in a language they could understand, rather than Greek and Hebrew). The fact that we don’t have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn’t perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words.
“In short, my study of the Greek New Testament, and my investigations into the manuscripts that contain it, led to a radical rethinking of my understanding of what the Bible is. This was a seismic change for me. Before this—starting with my born-again experience in high school, through my fundamentalist days at Moody, and on through my evangelical days at Wheaton—my faith has been based completely on a certain view of the Bible as the fully inspired, inerrant word of God. Now I no longer saw the Bible that way.”
Let me just say this: If we do not believe that God has verbally and plenarily preserved His words, that we have truly the very words of God today—100% infallible and inerrant without any mistake—and are against the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words behind the KJV, we might just end up like Ehrman—an agnostic and a modernist.
It goes without saying that it is not enough for true Christianity to believe in the verbal plenary inspiration (VPI) of the Scriptures; it is equally important to believe in the verbal plenary preservation (VPP) of the Scriptures. “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever” (Ps 12:6-7). The twin doctrines of VPI and VPP are our only sure defence against the attacks on the Bible today.
The Faculty and Board will soon take the Dean Burgon Oath as spelled out in the College Constitution which states:
4.1.1 We believe in the divine, Verbal Plenary Inspiration (Autographs) and Verbal Plenary Preservation (Apographs) of the Scriptures in the original languages, their consequent inerrancy and infallibility, and as the perfect Word of God, the supreme and final authority in faith and life (2 Tim 3:16, 2 Pet 1:20-21, Ps 12:6-7, Matt 5:18, 24:35).
4.1.1.1 We believe the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament underlying the Authorised (King James) Version to be the very Word of God, infallible and inerrant.
4.1.1.2 We uphold the Authorised (King James) Version to be the Word of God—the best, most faithful, most accurate, most beautiful translation of the Bible in the English language, and do employ it alone as our primary scriptural text in the public reading, preaching, and teaching of the English Bible.
4.1.1.3 The Board of Directors and Faculty shall affirm their allegiance to the Word of God by taking the Dean Burgon Oath at every annual convocation: “I swear in the Name of the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit that I believe ‘the Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, every letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High. The Bible is none other than the Word of God, not some part of it more, some part of it less, but all alike the utterance of Him that sitteth upon the throne, faultless, unerring, supreme.’”
We have a fixed Canon and a fixed Text. We see no need for textual criticism and we reject higher criticism altogether. May the Lord protect and preserve FEBC as we stand fast on His forever infallible and inerrant words until we see Him face to face. Amen.
